


Oh Pharaoh Speak

by shipcat



Series: Naruto Event Work [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Desert, Family, Gen, Human Puppetry (mentioned), Political Ambitions, Sunagakure | Hidden Sand Village, Sunan History, Vaguely Implied Hints of Sasori/Third Kazekage, ghouls (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 20:18:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipcat/pseuds/shipcat
Summary: The path back to Sunagakure is a winding one, filled with mirages, sand traps, and bickering over the remains of a human puppet collection.A post-Shukaku Gaara ponders over the legacy of the Kazekage.





	Oh Pharaoh Speak

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [@gaara-week](gaara-week.tumblr.com). Prompt: **Kazekage**.

Sand stretches out wide before a legged caravan, rolling with pale dunes. The desert sinks under its manifold feet, click and clacking as it crawls along the ground, blue glinting between its joints. Unhurried, the wind kisses the top of their wagon, setting dust into the crevices of their clothes. 

At the helm of the contraption, Temari clicks her tongue and wraps a scarf around her face. Teal eyes peek out from behind the cotton to glance back into the caravan, where Gaara rests, sitting separately from a pile of wood and flesh puppets. 

Eyes closed, he twirls his fingers on the sand floor, listening to the sound of insects flitting in the earth. A breeze creaks by, low and haunting. 

His mind clears. His heart beats. 

The desert seems so much kinder, now that he has died. 

At the front of the caravan, Kankurou shares a grateful look with Temari, before the Sand siblings returned to their respective tasks—sister on lookout for danger, brother tinkering with the brittle splinters of a doll who used to be a man.

A black dot on the horizon. Blurred. Feathered. They dance through a chimney of dark smoke, a flurry of human activity underneath. 

Bandits.

Gaara opens his eyes.

“Kankurou.”

“Gaara?” Kankurou mocks.

“Alter course by five degrees,” the redhead orders.

The puppeteer sets down his tools, lips quirking under purple paint. “Direction?”

“East.”

Kankurou lifts up his hands, glinting with taut blue strings. “You got it, lil bro.” The caravan rattles, tilting sideways as its legs scramble to obey. Temari glances back at Gaara, then shares a look with Kankurou: They don’t say a word, but the meaning is clear—the two are glad their little brother is alive.

The moment is brief and leaves his chest warm. Then Temari is whistling for a hawk, tying a message to its talon. The royal party will be entering through the catacombs, the note says in old Sunan. Lift the genjutsu accordingly. 

Gaara leans back against the caravan wall, crossing his arms against the wall. He closes his eyes and spreads his awareness. At their rear, lions slink out from behind outcrops, heads tilted in curiosity. Scorpions coil at their paws before scampering into the shadows of rocks, tails hooked nervously. On their immediate right, a snake weaves through the sand, leaving zigzags in its wake. 

It pauses to regard them, tongue testing the air. Gaara stares back, impervious. 

Then it lowers its head and slithers away, leaving the child king and his siblings to their travels. Gaara only hums. 

He was born of the desert. He knows how her affection rakes like hot coals, how she howls for her children, how her scathing embrace protects them, how she bleaches their bones in mourning.

He would not be the first Kazekage to fall here, and he will not be the last. But he will be damned to be cut down by criminals. 

Not like his father, taken by Orochimaru, still missing.

Not like the Third, taken by Sasori, little more than splinters with a face. Still taken by Sasori, given how his puppet looms over the redhead and his family. The mother’s hair falls over his form, as straight and brown as an oak shield. 

Kankurou tries to pry her arms away. “It is time to let go,” he quietly informs her, in the same way he talks to all of his puppets. 

Gaara peels open his eyes, suddenly tired.   
  
“Leave them be,” he neutrally intones. “Only a cruel man would separate mother from child.” 

Kankurou attempts to sputter an excuse—something about a proper burial—but Gaara cuts him off. 

“Do not be our father.” Sunlight glints over the sand, golden and blinding. Gaara turns away from the outside, blood churning in discomfort. 

“They will be burned together, or not at all.”

 

* * *

 

The path back to Sunagakure is a winding one, filled with mirages, sand traps, and bickering over the remains of a human puppet collection. 

That is to say, Temari and Kankurou bicker, and Gaara listens to his sibling-advisors. Kankurou advocates to preserve the works of Sasori of the Red Sand—”They are art, they are  _ culture _ —” while Temari furiously digs in with her morals:

“They are abominations.”

“Please!” Kankuro scoffs. “They are war machines, at worse.”

“They are corpses. Ghouls.” Temari flicks her hand sharply. “They will come inside our house, gnaw on our skulls. And eat your brains, too—if you had any.”

“Rumors! Myths! Urban legends!” Kankuro thunders. “I cannot believe, that you  _ believe—wait _ , did you call me stupid?”

“The Council will not allow it,” Temari continues. “Quit fangirling, and get your head out of the clouds. I mean it.”

“I have to agree,” Gaara interrupts. 

Kankurou slumps his shoulders. “You’re the one with your head in the clouds,” he mutters. “Ms. Deer Boy, Ms. Smartie Pants, Ms. I Like Guys That Can Kick My Ass—”    
  
Temari levels a venomous glare at her brother, who squeaks and falls silent. The caravan clatters as it rocks forward, now on bare stone rather than sand.

Kankurou crosses his arms, looking out at the surrounding cliffs. 

“Listen. Hey! No,  _ listen _ ,” he insists at Temari’s evil eye. “You tell the elders that I torched the Akasuna, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Ehh?” Her eyebrow twitches. “You punk. Why should I—”

“Then it’s settled.” Gaara claps his hands conclusively. His sister will lie so his brother can do as he pleases. Nepotism at its finest. “We will not speak of this again,” he adds when Temari starts to argue. 

What to do with the Third Kazekage is another matter entirely.

Loved even in his anonymity, the Council would bite off their tongues before (considering) the thought of letting the Third be cremated with the others. Yet, hated as Sasori was, any proposal to keep his infernal contraption would cause immediate backlash.

He ponders the problem, and its solution, as they pass through the rusted gates of underground Suna. Vases stood in dark alcoves, depicting battles of centuries past. Amongst the oldest, he found the conquest of the nomadic tribes by the first Kazekage; then, walking along the artifacts, the siege of the Land of Rivers by the second, and arms and legs sticking out of iron fields, graciously planted by the Third.

There were no depictions of the Fourth, Rasa, nor of Gaara himself. But then again, old Suna had been at its peak when the Third was in power, and evacuated when Shukaku had made graves of its tunnels. Still, bits of the past remain, enshrined in pieces of pottery, busts of noblemen with hair pinned in buns by elaborate knots. Puppet or not, name or no, the Third would last. Even in this shrine of sand and bones.

The true question is—would Gaara?

Bleary, yellow eyes peek out from refurbished crypts, scattered with the remnants of old fires. The sand siblings march through their homes, and they scatter. Just like rats, Gaara notes, watching them scurry away in filthy robes. 

But even rats deserve mercy. 

What of kings?

What of him?

 

* * *

 

The city opens up to a parade, ribbons thrown over their heads.

“Someone gossiped about your return,” an ANBU informs Gaara. Kankurou smugly pulls him to the front of the caravan to overlook a crowd, cheering for the Fifth Kazekage. 

Never before had Gaara seen this many people happy to see him. He raises his hand in greeting, because that seems appropriate, only for all of Sunagakure to roar in turn. 

Temari steps next to him, smirking at his astonishment. “They love you.” She tilts her head in the direction of the crowd, teasing, “you know?”

_ ‘No, I didn’t,’  _ he internally replies, lowering his arm. These are the same men who tried to kill him, the same women who pulled children away from his empty sandcastles. Now, his people grin and toss rice in the air, celebrating his victory and survival. Gaara cannot help but smile softly at them in turn.

This is what power gets you, he surmises. Love, and adoration.

Dozens of hands clamor to the edge of his robes, eyes piercing through him a hundredfold. Joy and humidity thicken the air, congealing tightly in his lungs. Gaara nods, and the caravan pushes through the masses, nearly crushing them with its legs. 

He swallows wetly, and closes his eyes.

In an distant alley, the sand rises up in a swirl. Piling pebble upon pebble, it takes the shape of a man with a gourd. Colors bleed into him like dye in water—red hair, kohl-lined teal, deep crimson robes. 

Gaara opens his eyes, sees no one, and sighs in relief.

It is hard to be popular, when one has spent their life in isolation. This Gaara ponders as he walks along the emptied marketplace, absentmindedly perusing the unguarded wares: lamps claiming to grant wishes, copper wires twisted into gem-eyed scarabs, glass beads suspended on curtains of strings. 

Compared to the roar of the crowd, the silence is near disquieting. Almost uncomfortably so.

Clouds pass overhead, blocking out the sun. He runs a hand across the waves of beads, just to hear them tinkle, and makes his way to the village limits. Long-gone kings loom out of the rock face, carved and painted by dutiful Sunan artisans. His father is as stoned-mouthed and unflinching as the day he disappeared. Gnarled vines crawl over his cheek, burrowing under the sediment skin. Only two years old, and Rasa was already crumbling.

Sand parts at his feet, revealing a clear and present path. Gaara continues on his way, pensively rubbing his robe sleeve. Red fog seeps into his mind, a premonition of chaotic things to come. Nine Akatsuki members, one eliminated, one victorious—the laughing blond from Iwagakure, Deidara. An unknown number of demon containers, distant villages, the need for a politician to unite them all. An opportunity to be that man.

The Third, forgotten. The Fourth, reviled. 

“I will not be so wretched,” Gaara decides. 

He swears it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I had a lot of fun writing the desert and bazaar aesthetics ahgjdflghflkdaghdl
> 
> Leave a kudos or comment if you can?
> 
> My [Tumblr](thatshipcat.tumblr.com).
> 
> My [PillowFort](pillowfort.io/thatshipcat).


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